1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to document search engines and, more particularly, to searching, ranking, and displaying documents, including but not limited to text files, video clips and sound files.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current search engines search for documents which have one or more of the search terms specified by the user initiating the search. These search engines, however, miss documents which do not contain those specific terms. Current search engines also sort or rank the identified documents by, for example, the number of times a search term is used in the documents, monetary consideration paid by a person or entity wishing for a particular document to be ranked higher, etc. This can result in a document having a higher ranking or a more prominent display position simply because someone is exploiting the system by using a search term(s) numerous times in the document, or because there is someone willing to pay to have the document ranked more highly. Current search engines also display the identified and ranked documents in a one-dimensional manner; that is, a single column which lists the highest ranked document first, the second-highest ranked document second, etc. This requires the user to review numerous documents to try to find those that are truly relevant.